Cold Reads: The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce

Horror is fear of the unknown, the invisible terror
lurking just beyond our sight. Even in movies and literature when the
creature or abomination is exposed in all their grotesque glory, it
is the thought of them slinking in the darkness that creates the
tension. As the cliché goes, what you don't see is more
frightening than what you do see. Ambrose Bierce teaches us this most
valuable of lessons in his short but powerful tale of "The Damned
Thing."

It is night, a collection of men are gathered together
in a small cottage. One of them is a coroner who is reading from the
diary of the corpse (tastefully placed on the table) by the light of
a candle. William Harker soon arrives at the inquest, having been
summoned to come due to the fact that he accompanied the deceased,
Hugh Morgan, in the last days of his life. Harker has a fantastic
tale to tell, one that he can hardly come to grips with. Having been
invited by Hugh for a week of hunting, Harker arrives at the cottage
and is stunned by his host's strange manners. Things go from bad to
worse when, while tracking through a field of wild oats, the men are
attacked by an unseen beast whose movements can only be determined
from the path of crushed foliage it leaves in its wake. The invisible
monster has soon slaughtered Morgan, leaving Harker with a corpse and
a mystery. But the last few pages of Morgan's diary just may
explain the incalculable implications of the monster's existence...

While it might seem a tried plot by today's jaded
standards, the premise of Bierce's story is fresh and original
given the time it was written in. The story of the invisible, alien
menace has been copied most predominantly in the science fiction
genre and one can definitely see the inspiration authors such as
Lovecraft might have gleaned from this tale. The cosmic threat that
the Damned Thing poses to humanity is chilling, even more so than H.
P.'s Great Old Ones. This is simply because the Damned Thing is
invisible, undetected by the human eye. If it wasn't for its
apparently great size (and thus its noisy approach), mankind would
not be able to stand against such a being without being able to give
it some shape.

This
is where the true terror of Bierce's story lies. He is commenting
on the frailty of our senses, a very philosophical view for a
campfire tale. Morgan hypothesizes in his diary that there are
sounds, colors, and other sensations that are unreachable by human
perception on their respective spectrums. Bierce uses the example of
birds to illustrate his point. At the end of the story, Morgan
comments on how a flock of birds flies from a tree, seemingly for no
discernible reason at all. The hunter supposes that the leader of the
flock had called out a signal, a note so high that the human ear
could not pick it up. Morgan then applies this theory to the mystery
of the Damned Thing. What if, he wonders, there are colors,
either too light or dark in tone, that are unseen by the human eye. A
creature of this chromatic scheme could slip by, completely
invisible. This theory is not really far-fetched in the least when
you think about it and it makes the Damned Thing all the more
horrifying to ponder.

It seems all the more fitting that Bierce refrains from
using brave and knowledgeable men of the world, such as adventurers
and antiquarians, and utilizes people from the salt of the earth in
his tale. Taking place in Bierce's home of the Southern states, the
story takes a new approach to horror in showing us how good ol'
country boys might handle the threat of an invisible monstrosity. The
characters have no previous knowledge of ancient rites or prophecies
warning of dangers to come. The coroner and his comrades have the
small-town mentality of sticking to their own business and just going
through life on a lackadaisical day-to-day routine. They also seem to
posses the collective ignorance of the Transylvanian village
stereotype. They refuse to give any credence to Harker's story
simply on the basis of their disbelief and refusal to change their
views. Bierce shows us the small-mindedness of these characters by
their disapproval of the existence of an invisible creature. If they
can't see it, then it's not there. Their minds are firmly inside
the box and they're not budging an inch. It's ignorance like this
that may lead to their ultimate doom.

Despite all these cataclysmic conclusions, Bierce
punctuates his story with his trademark brand of sharp wit and
sarcasm. This is most apparent in the titles of the chapters that
divide the story. He entitles his first section "One Does Not
Always Eat What is on the Table" and then introduces us to Hugh
Morgan, the presently expired woodsman whose carcass now adorns the
table of his lodge. Bierce toys with this black humor (again at the
expense of Hugh) in the third chapter "A Man though Naked may be in
Rags." This pun refers to the rather gruesomely shredded remains of
Mr. Morgan as a result of his short-lived battle with the Damned
Thing. Bierce seems to be aware that horror and humor can play off
each other superbly. And with Bierce's biting, sardonic pen, this
chemistry is balanced out perfectly without the reader being removed
from the atmosphere by the sudden bursts of comedy.

"The
Damned Thing" is the type of tale to read while camping out in the
forest. It will have all the listeners moving in closer to the fire,
occasionally glancing over their shoulders to ensure that nothing is
emerging from the darkness of the forest. Bierce's story is short
and mysterious, leaving most of the tale to the reader's
imagination. If you hear a sudden noise in the night, be sure to take
a look out to see if anything's really there. But be warned: just
because you don't see
anything...